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Hi, all- I've been cross posting a bit with this stuff. Just in case you don't visit Cardgamedb or Boardgamegeek, here's some info if you're interested-
At the FFG In-Flight report, I asked Christian Petersen if FFG had licensed the LCG model to any other companies, to which he replied "no." The bottom line is, LCG, Living Card Game and all of those terms vis a vis hobby gaming are FFG's intellectual property.
We had a chance on Saturday to talk to UD Entertainment's "Corporate Message Guy" at Gen Con, mostly to ask him about the potential "LCG" legal issue (there's also a website called Gamersledge that did a live interview with him that matches a lot of what we heard). We're preparing a quick follow-up to our post from a few days ago with some thoughts and learnings, but a couple of hits for the curious:
*I asked him about Christian Peterson of FFG's statement that no companies had received a license to use the LCG brand (noting that their big Vs. sign had the "Living Card Game" part covered up by a little thing that said "Gen Con 2014"... touche). He stated that it was "definitely an oversight" and that the game won't be called a Living Card Game when if it's given a wide release (he then did a sales pitch for the LCG model without using the term LCG, so there's that)
*He sort of positioned himself as the creative impetus for reviving Vs, so we asked him some follow-ups
*Re: Mike Hummel's original "vision" for Vs. as a framework system for a multi-property comic book TCG, he said that there will definitely be "no DC," but that they'd expand the original vision to include other UDE properties, e.g. Aliens vs Predator and the Ubisoft catalog (Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy, etc)
*Re: The bizarre lack of communication from UD and the sort of "thrown-together" nature of the release, his response was that they specifically wanted to see if a limited Vs release could sustain itself on word of mouth alone
*Re: Support through organized play, UD's intent pretty much sounds like it was recited word for word from Anton Torres's numerous interviews with ICV2
*Re: The reprints with no new content whatsoever, his response was that there was a lot of desire to do this printing, but it had to be done inexpensively (at the risk of editorializing, my friend's private response to this was "so all they did was hit "print," then")
Make of those what you will- I think at this point, all opinions (positive and negative, especially re: lack of demos) are very valid, especially considering the weird way in which this thing was launched, but our major takeaway was that the company is at least pretty serious about giving Vs. a fair shot. We're both about 90% confident that we'll, at the very least, see a core set released- anything beyond that is completely impossible to predict at this point.

Not an FFG product, but for the curious-
http://overunderpod.tumblr.com/post/94786851425/front-line-at-gen-con-the-return-of-vs-system
TL;DR- Upper Deck Entertainment is selling core sets for a Vs. System LCG.
One thing we didn't mention was the possible (likely) legal issues surrounding the "LCG" term. Hopefully someone will ask for comment tomorrow at the In-Flight report, if not I'mma just do it myself

I got inspiration for my MacGuffin from an early chapter in Sons of Fortune- the tiny little blurb about Corellian "Soul Gems"- I think it's on the last page of the chapter about Corellia, for those following along at home. Basically, some Corellians have a tradition where they not only cremate their dead, but compress the ashes into a diamond-y thing called a soul gem. The formula goes- [bad guy] needs the remains of Corellian Jedi [Corellian name] for his [bad guy thing- like a ritual, or whatever]. The group won't realize until later on that the lightsaber they looted from an early adventure is actually his remains- they were made into a soul gem, and the soul gem is the focusing crystal of the lightsaber. The group doesn't understand why the various agents of the bad guy are convinced that the group has the remains until you're ready for a big reveal. Boom.

I think this is why I don't see the Endor cycle coming so soon - because it would be almost exactly the same as Hoth, but starting with the Imperials establishing their base.
I kinda like the idea of a Rogue Squadron cycle, but that would of course be Rebel-heavy, so unless we got Isard (father and daughter) and the like, Booster Terrik and so on, I don't know if it would be feasible. Hopefully it won't be too long before we get to find out, anyway!
I like where your head's at- but I can't resist pointing out that the "storyline" of the Hoth cycle was likely a holdover from the Nate French-designed version of the game, where Force packs would have had missions and stories a la The LotR Card Game. I would be pleasantly surprised if they continued to have a heavy focus on storyline, but I wouldn't be shocked if they moved to a slightly more abstract structure like Game of Thrones, where the theming of each cycle tends toward a heavier focus on what new gameplay mechanics are being introduced (e.g. Seasons in the Seasons cycle, Shadows in the King's landing cycle, etc) - this would be in line with the fairly abstract nature of the Star Wars game we all know and love.
Either way, +1 for blind speculation at an Endor cycle. I want my Grizz Frix card and my "She gonna blow!" event card!!

Every play group is different. FFG has been obsessive in the casualization of their OP structure (even going so far as to officially change "League Night" to "Game Night") for just this reason- they want the local level to be super casual. I suggest you stick with it- as the game continues to attract new players, you'll get a wider spread of competitive and casual folks.
I'd certainly like to get more competitive, but I also have a couple of totally noncompetitive decks that I like to mess around with. No reason you can't have your cake and eat it too.

How close are you to Route 50/North Clermont? Hero's Landing doesn't have a whole lot of space (they're moving into a new building in a few months) but the owner is very open to hosting league nights as long as we supply the players. My roommate and I got all inspired by Tiny's "How to build a meta" speech in Smugglers Den a few weeks ago so we're pretty much looking at a day/night for us to go and play consistently every week, even if its just the two of us. Lemme know how close you are!

To piggyback on the Dark Time timing topic- is the word "refresh" referenced in the text referring to the act of removing your tokens (refreshing) or is it referring to the completion of the Refresh Phase? You replace destroyed objectives only after removing focus and shield tokens if i understand the flowchart correctly. My question basically being, if I pull A Dark Time during the Refresh Phase to replace a destroyed objective, will its power activate starting the turn its pulled?
Thanks!

Hi, all!
Is this meta still healthy? My roommate and I would love to join. I was doing some research and found a meetup group for Sci-Fi City. It'll be quite a drive for us, so we'd like to be sure there'll be players.